Tigran Bayburtsyan: TreeScale will pitch for Silicon Valley investors

Silicon Valley Open Doors (SVOD) technology investment conference will take place in Silicon Valley on May 25-26, where TreeScale will be the only Armenian pitching startup.

It was picked along with other 35 startups to pitch their work for Silicon Valley angel investors and venture foundations.

Ahead of the conference, Itel.am talked to TreeScale founder Tigran Bayburtsyan.

- TreeScale will be the only Armenian startup in SVOD (Silicon Valley Open Doors) technology investment conference. How you were selected and what opportunities will the participation open for you?

- There was a STEP startup competition organized by EIF, CRDF Global and Armenian Ministry of Economy, and I was one of the winners.

Later the organizers arranged a selection process among the top winners, and I was selected to represent my startup at SVOD.

There will be 300+ top angel investors and VC representatives, 800+ experts in technology field and from top SV companies, and around 1000 world class startup founders who are shaping tech industry and ecosystems.

Just imagine, being among this environment by itself is a great value in terms of making new connections, discover new partnership opportunities and get connected with potential investors.

I will also have an opportunity to be one of 35 pre-selected top startups to pitch on stage in front of the premier Silicon Valley angels & VCs, and considering the fact that there are several interested investors, it’s a good opportunity to find other investors with specific domain interest such as mine.

I have already received USD 40,000 from EIF and the World Bank, and USD 6000 from CDRF Global for the first development stage, validated the product/market fit and built a great technology of cloud distribution system based on microservices.

Now I clearly know what the final solution is going to be and who the target user is, and now it’s time for closing another bigger round of funding in order to scale the development team and add additional features that customers want, and also start to build a small sales team.

- How do you estimate TreeScale’s chances to attract American investors? Do you consider the U.S. market your priority market?

- TreeScale is a deep technology product which is based on recent Docker and cloud container microservices.



The market there is expected to grow more than 200 billion dollars by 2018 and now is growing super-super fast, only in 3 years 35% of enterprises using public cloud started to use other solutions like TreeScale.

The adoption rate of such new solutions in the U.S. is very good, it means there is no need to convince companies, they just need a good solution and understand that it’s solving their pain, and hence it’s comparably easier to close sales deal with US clients.

Within this perspective, it is now important to find another investor in this domain who besides money will support TreeScale to take the company to the next level.

We are now talking with a Techstars mentor. He is interested and committed to invest in TreeScale, but recent situations in the frontline in Karabakh made him review this deal due to some “country risk”.

However, I am not disappointed as I am sure there will be others especially among Armenian tech community who might be thinking to invest in an Armenian startup.

-There will be many VC representatives at SVOD. Do you think TreeScale is ready for VC investments in this stage of development?

- Good question, frankly speaking, we are not ready for VC investment now, as for that we need to have a constant and good growth rate, and also in my area the VC-s are looking on IP-s and patents regarding technology, but I am not focusing on that.

I would say we will look for smart angels rather than VC-s during SVOD.

- We know that you visited Silicon Valley before. What do short-term visits contribute to experience?

- I was in San Francisco last time in Summer 2015 and managed to somehow meet lots of cool people from Battery Ventures, Founders of Cloudera, the founder of Docker, AME Cloud Ventures.


Docker founder Solomon Hykes is getting familiar with TreeScale technology

It was a great lesson for me, a very good lesson to learn that people are open to talk and give feedback or opinion, the only thing is that you should be open to listening to new opinions and then think of how relevant are they for your case.

I hope this time I will learn even more important things and make new connections with potential investors and partners in order to take TreeScale to the next step, and in a few years to put TreeScale success with current success stories as Picsart, Teamable, Joomag, Renderforest, Sololearn, Codefights, etc.

Narine Daneghyan talked to Tigran Bayburtsyan